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Well, that was an awful lot of time, money and hullabaloo to wind up where our eternal election season began: President Obama. Republican House. Democratic Senate.

Think there might be better ways to spend $6 billion than on all this? How many states could get out of debt? How might community service groups help people in real need? How many jobs besides those for political hacks might those dollars fund? Just about anything would have been a better use of the money.

And nothing changed. What a waste.

More than 47 percent of Americans voted for Mitt Romney. Count that as one gaffe forgiven despite the froth.

Still, Obama narrowly but decisively won the popular vote, as well as the Electoral College. This spared us endless punditry about eliminating that last archaic election feature of the founders, as much sense as this would make. The Electoral College remains proof that the Founding Fathers might have been plenty clever but were far from infallible.

Mostly, though, it's nice to get our phones and televisions back. The TV was easy enough to deal with - don't watch and if you do, always use the recording features to avoid the commercials. The phone, at least in my house, was more problematic. We live in a cell phone hole, and the kids still call. But why do the campaigns think we'll consider anything short of murder when they call and call and ...?

On a fundamental level, Romney or Obama was the wrong question. Each would have been hamstrung, hostage to a still abysmal Congress that has long forgotten that its job is to negotiate differences into actions best for the country, not Rush Limbaugh's twisted notions of "principle." Ditto for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Oh, and we're headed for that fiscal cliff again, handling it with all the grace and skill of Greece.

But there are small rays of hope in the tepid mouthings of politicians about working together, and the faint heartbeat left in the Simpson-Bowles effort to right the fiscal ship.

Also, never take for granted that elections set our course, not guns.

In this one thing, elections, we really should take a page from the French. Their races last three weeks.